1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates in general to fiber optic sensors and in particular to a new and useful method and system for providing temperature compensation for a fiber optic sensor.
2. Description of Related Art
Microbending of optical fibers provides a simple and straightforward means of transduction, through intensity modulation for a wide variety of static and dynamic sensor types, such as pressure transducers, strain gages, accelerometers, and displacement transducers. Because these sensors use analog intensity modulation, for accuracy, they must be compensated for any undesired variables which produce changes in the launched light intensity, including cable and connector effects, vibration and temperature. Vibration, cable and connector effects are generally compensated through the use of multiplexed optical architectures either in the wavelength domain or the time domain. In these architectures, the total signal includes a reference component which is modulated by the error components only and an active component which is modulated by both the measurand and the error components. The relative amplitudes of these two components are then used in the signal processing to determine the magnitude of the desired measurand.
Presently, there is no known system or method which provides for temperature compensation for a fiber optic system sensor in a simple and efficient manner.